Assonance
by DevonWren
Summary: Merlin/Arthur slash - sort of. Post-character death. Completely understand if you don't want to read it because of that.


_**Weirdly enough, I recited this as a drama piece for my English GCSE (53/54 – really quite pleased about that) so I thought I should upload it 'cos Mr Davies reckoned it was quite good.**_

Assonance

I remember once, and once only, when fire burned as torches on the chambers walls, and the peasants would only gather in their own homes, when the stars weren't ashamed to be associated with the night sky. And when my skin and sight didn't act as heavy barriers. When no silence was quiet. And when thinking heads were empty.

_That_ was my life.

Anything after is merely the patter of dreadful repetition that creeps through the existence of my dreams. The terrifying faces of people staring from fountains and the man with toads leaping from his mouth - as Merlin had shown them - they needed no Witchfinder. His control had given him up.

Anything before that night- _never happened._ The sea of happiness had drowned that false, but believed, contentment years ago.

I'd found something better. Surely _seconds ago._..

But the magic has done its bidding now.

If I, Arthur, not Arthur _Pendragon, not the crown prince_, but Arthur, held the same power as either. Not the boy, not the father, not even the dark and pale mother who I grew up with and curled by the fire with as a child, but the one who'd died - how would I use it? - To tightly entwine my mind with the sweetness of Merlin's and sweep away the dusty, smothering debris that came with his '_inconvenience_'. Essentially, I would bind us with arrows from rose red harps.

I would not betray.

I would not cast shadows across those gleaming blue if my life had rested on the notion.

I would not have killed.

I would not have destroyed.

The courage spent on destruction could be put to better use, swiping swords and murdering foe. Wiping the scum from the place that stood before Merlin, the place occupied by none other than a young boy. _The _young boy. Not put to letting his friend's heart bleed out.

How strange... The boy who was born to kill _me_... _Has. _In fewer words, done exactly that. He has killed my protector, the one whom I protected in return. The one who held my life within the lifeblood in his veins. The one whom without, I would not be.

Replaced him with a monster - a monster who my father said '_had to die_'.

No, he did not have to die. He had to live, but was not allowed that basic right because of what _they _made him.

That was _not_ Merlin.

No... That was not _my _Merlin.

The Merlin I had once held, on our one night of no-pretence, had had golden eyes that shone blue in the darkness. His eyes were _meant_ to shine. His smile burnt kingdoms as they surrendered to his innocence. And the dry wit that flicked off of the edge of his tongue let creatures loose in my stomach. That was the sound, amongst assonance, that my ears are longing for. Not the splintered, undignified wail that pierced the air around the flames. Not the splintered, undignified wail that pierced the soft, untainted flesh around my core, as _they_ tore the soul from Merlin's eyes.

Yes.

Merlin had killed - but only after _being_ killed, only after they'd ripped away his sanity. He had killed many of someone else's accord- but not me.

He would not kill me. Not after I watched him be thrown like a torn cloth into the cell, thin arms not able to withstand the harshness of the force, and legs crippling under his beaten frame. Eyes stained with blood. With one look I could have been dead where I stood - but he would not do it. Not after I begged him to kill both of us. He would not do it. Because? Because he loved me too much to take my life, when he thought the only life that needed to be taken was his.

_But as if now I have a life?_

And there was no 'need' other than the pulse of my heart that threatened to stop under his accepting gaze.

A boy - nothing more, had stolen his control, as if Merlin could survive without it. He'd said. There was a period of time when I began to think it was a joke?

His charred remains speak otherwise.

Sorcerers - The name makes it hard not to laugh. As if they were _anything_ of Merlin - United in evil, to bring down and execute one of their own. The one that fought their cause, the one that, without, they would never be called '_equals_'. Even in death, Merlin would tower above their small and tortured minds. His love was always stronger than their hate. But they'd stood, plaguing the air that we breathed, forcing Merlin's glittering, hateless, and most of all, cherished form to darkness. Until he was a mere silhouette.

The pain in the eyes that had found me hurt more than the flames.

If I could take his hand, lead the breaking boy away and find that which made him Merlin... I would only think once - and do it.

But time has passed. An uncountable number of days have frozen overhead, suspending the castle with grief and choking each breath with regret. And each one results in my heart dissolving again. For I am cold without the thud of Merlin's clumsy feet and the cool of the bad circulation in his hands. The unbidden kindness in his eyes... That never failed me. The amount of times I've pressed my life to his forehead and he's listened, dead or alive. And the times his grin has torn me from slumber and dragged me, terrified, into blissful arms - Is few. But so very significant.

Now all that my mind will remember was the despair as he lost who he was, as sparks soared from his fingertips and cut away the foundations of our destiny. Despair as the guards took the lost boy away. He hadn't protested. No longer fuelled by fear, he'd whispered to me,

'_This is my time_'

He'd expected it.

And I had let it.

I told him something, long before any of this. I remember putting my hand on his shoulder, as he fought back the tears for the man, I did not know, was his father, _'No man is worth your tears_', I'd said.

And I know that tears would do nothing now.

But that doesn't stop me crying. Loud enough that everyone should hear - _but no one does._

Because I understand, better than any of them - the words Merlin made so dreadfully apparent to me the morning of his death, between stuttered breaths and slurred blinking:

I realised,

To lose the only love you've ever found in your life is to lose the ability to love again.

_**There was something that followed 'but as if now I have a life?' but it has been lost to time – it was even more clichéd than the rest of it so I'm not too fussed.**_


End file.
